New Zealand

As of September 28th, 2016, I am currently living and travelling through New Zealand for a year with my partner, Hilary. This page is where I will post and collect all of the updates throughout the trip.

I plan to write a new post every week or two with pictures and stories from the places that we visit. This is where you can follow along and share in our adventures as the year progresses.

The NZ Adventure Map:

This map shows our route through New Zealand as our adventure progresses. Our journey began in Auckland, on the North Island and only time will tell when we will end up. But the good news is that you can follow along here.

Using the Map:

For best use of the map, you can click the small square on the top right of the map to open it in a full window.

Or click the box in the top left to open the side panel. Here you can click the red boxes to see our route through each area of New Zealand separately.

Our New Zealand Travel Resources:

Throughout our travels, we have accumulated a few invaluable resources that have been extremely helpful for our adventure. This is our list of resources all in one place that I hope you can use in your own NZ travels!

CamperMate: Campermate is an app that you can download to any of your devices and is one of our favourite tools for a road trip through New Zealand. You can download the map of New Zealand as well so that you can use the app when you don’t have any internet access. It shows you everything from camping sites (free and paid), reviews and advice on camping spots, wifi locations, gas stations, places of interest, public toilets, showers, groceries, and everything in between. It is absolutely a must-have tool for any camping trip in New Zealand!

WWOOF: WWOOF is a website that you can use to find places to work on farms throughout New Zealand in exchange for food and accommodation. We haven’t used the site ourselves, but it is very popular and I though I should mention it as it is a great way to reduce your costs and meet local people in New Zealand in exchange for your labour.

HelpX:HelpX is similar to WWOOF and is another place where you can exchange your labour for food and accomodation. Again, we haven’t used this resource ourselves, but it is quite popular in New Zealand. Another similar site is called Workaway.

Pak’nSave: Pak’nSave is a grocery store that has great prices and is where we do most of our shopping. It’s easy to spot their gigantic yellow sign in most towns that you are in throughout New Zealand. Other grocery stores to keep and eye out for are NewWorld and CountDown.

TradeMe: TradeMe is a website where anyone can buy or sell things online in New Zealand. It’s similar to Kijiji or Ebay.

Seek:Seek is a website with job postings and is the most popular site of this kind throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Kiwi Bank: You’ll only need this resource if you are staying in NZ long-term and are planning to work. But if that’s the case, I would recommend setting up a bank account with Kiwi Bank. They are always located next to post offices which is convenient and we set ourselves up with a free account that lets us do all of our banking online.

Spark: Spark is a phone company in New Zealand that I highly recommend. Even if you are only travelling to NZ for a quick trip you can get a SIM card for $5 and a monthly plan for around $20 or $30. We started with a company called Vodaphone but switched to Spark because the plans are better. I pay $29 per month and get 1gb of data, 100 minutes, unlimited texting, and a subscription to Spotify Premium. You can also use all of the Spark wifi hotspots that are very common throughout NZ. You just have to make sure that you have an unlocked phone if you are coming from North America.

Book Me: It can be quite expensive to do a lot of activities in New Zealand. But there is a website called Bookme where you can get deals on different activities and attractions to make things more affordable.

Pick NZ: I haven’t used Pick NZ myself, but it is the go-to site for anyone looking for fruit picking jobs in New Zealand. You can find work opportunities and find out what time of year different areas of the country will be ready for fruit picking.

New Zealand Trip Updates:

Below is the collection of updates from the trip (with the newest at the top). This is where you can find all of our stories and pictures for our adventure.

This is going to be a fairly quick post because...well...because it was a short trip. After visiting Mount Cook several times during the summer, we decided that we wanted to see the National Park in the winter. Mount Cook has always been our place to escape to when we...

In case you haven’t been following along with my story (and I don’t blame you, half of the time I don’t even know where I am or what I’m doing, so I definitely don’t expect you to), I’ll give you a quick catch-up. My partner Hilary and I are currently living and...

The Catlins Forest Park: After being in New Zealand for roughly 8 months, we have been able to see a good majority of the places that we’ve wanted to. Of course, there are always more roads untravelled, an endless amount of hikes and adventures to do, and...

Mount Alfred Day Hike in Glenorchy With the end of another week of work, and lots to still explore in New Zealand, Hilary and I loaded up our campervan again and headed off for a few days. We seem to have a never ending list of things to do and see in New Zealand so...

Top 8 Things to do in Milford Sound: After being in New Zealand for about 6 months, Hilary and I finally decided that a trip down to Milford Sound was long overdue. Milford Sound is the most popular tourist destination in New Zealand and yet, after seeing...

Mountain Biking - The Glen Dene Ridge Track near Wanaka When we first arrived in Wanaka several months ago, it was the beginning of summer and we were super excited to get out and do some hiking in the area. Within our first few days in the area we got out and climbed...

Dunedin: Lately, Hilary and I have been doing a lot of local trips in the area between Wanaka and Queenstown. We haven’t been able to do much exploring or see new areas of New Zealand, either because we haven’t had consecutive days off together, or because we’ve had...

Cragieburn Mountain Biking Road Trip So, as you may remember from some of my earlier posts, I’m currently working at a bike shop in Wanaka. This means that every day I talk to people that have been riding in all different places throughout New Zealand. One of the...

Bungy Jumping - Nevis Bungy in Queenstown Bungy jumping has always been on my list of things that I someday wanted to do. Like most people, however, the thought of it terrifies me and I’ve never really put much effort into finding somewhere to actually do it. Since...

New Zealand Update: Climbing Ben Lomond Sometimes it’s difficult to balance life with work but it’s something that I’ve always found important to do. Our time in New Zealand has definitely been an effort to put more of the adventures and the life part of the balance...

Brewster Hut Since being in New Zealand, we’ve heard over and over again about the awesome hut network that exists in the country. If you look at a map of New Zealand's huts it’s immediately apparent that wherever you are in the country you are never very far from a...

Getting to Coromandel Peak by Foot: Ever since arriving in Wanaka several months ago, I have wanted to stay on top of Roy’s Peak for a night to watch the sunset and sunrise. I’ve always found that hiking peaks is fun, but staying the night on top of them puts a...

Glenorchy: For the last few weeks we’ve stayed close to our home in Wanaka and put our exploring and adventures on hold slightly. We’ve spent a lot of time biking around the local trails (we both got new bikes over the Christmas holidays), and with some rainy...

Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook: After spending about month in Wanaka working and settling into the area, we had the itch to get on the road again to explore beyond the Wanaka area. So, when we had a couple of days off from work again, we loaded up Ernie (our camper van if...

Roy’s Peak: The last post that I put up covered our first few weeks in Wanaka. Since then, we haven’t done any major exploration as we’ve been spending time doing smaller things around Wanaka, settling into the town, and bike riding. The one hike that we have been...

Wanaka: After spending about 6 weeks driving across New Zealand, we had finally arrived in Wanaka. Before leaving Canada, we had tentatively planned to make Wanaka our home base in New Zealand. We got lucky in making that choice because the area around Wanaka was by...

West Coast to Wanaka: After leaving the Nelson area, we began to slowly make our way towards Wanaka. We decided to drive down the West coast as it's supposed to be a little bit longer but more scenic. It is definitely a beautiful drive and the road follows along the...

Nelson: After crossing over from the North Island to the South Island on October 24th, we headed west across the top of the South Island. Before continuing our migration south, we decided to stop for a few days to explore the area around the city of Nelson....

End of the North Island: After leaving the Taranaki area of New Zealand, we headed down the west coast to the very bottom of the North Island. We were nearing the end of our time on the North Island at this point, and had already booked our ferry tickets to take us to...

Taranaki: After doing the Tongariro Crossing hike, we made our way back to the west coast of the North Island. As there is no direct route back to the coast, we had to go north first and then wrap our way back south again once we had reached the coast. Our next...

Tongariro Alpine Crossing: After leaving Hawkes Bay, we made our way back to the Lake Taupo area. We didn't spend much time in the Lake Taupo area, and only stayed one night on the south shore of the lake. Our reason for returning to this area was that there is a...

Rotorua to Hawkes Bay: We arrived in Rotorua after spending some time further north and spent a few days in the town before moving further south again to Hawkes Bay. At this point, we had been on the road for about two weeks and living out of a van and doing a...

Piha to Rotorua After exploring Northland, we began to make our way south, past Auckland and into the main body of the North Island. At this point, the main trajectory of our journey was to be south as we zig-zagged our way across the North Island from top to bottom...

Northland: After leaving Auckland, we made our way North to explore the small finger of land that sticks out of the top of the North Island. This region is called Northland and is slightly less travelled that many of the other areas of the country. For us, Northland...

Leaving Home: On September 28th Hilary and I flew out of Calgary at 6:40 PM with one-way tickets to New Zealand for a year. It's tough to describe the feelings leading up to flying out, and even though it should have been filled with excitement for the adventures to...

What is this site about?

This site is my place to share everything that I know about photography and travel. I'm not an expert, I'm just a guy who loves this stuff and I want to share everything that I learn, as I learn it, with complete honesty and transparency. So, whether you're looking to improve your photography or you want to learn more about travelling to a new place, I want to help you on your journey. Check out my about page to find out more and get in contact with me. I'd love to hear from you!